Spiffberrypi | 74 (pdf) and 57 Vital Commands

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74 Raspberrypi Commands (PDF)

Raspberry-Pi-74-Commands

https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/raspberry-pi-command-line-commands,6159.html

Most people run Linux on Raspberry Pi and its "official" operating system is a version of Debian called Raspbian that's been modified just for the Pi. From a typical user perspective, the default Raspbian desktop user interface is similar to Windows, with a main menu and system tray on the desktop along with icons for common applications.

However, like all forms of Linux, Raspbian has a powerful command line interface that gives you a lot more control over the computer than you can get using the GUI. And many important tasks are either easier or only possible via commands. That's why, below we've listed the most important commands for navigating the file system, installing software, editing files and monitoring performance.

Opening a Terminal

 

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To open a terminal from the Windows GUI, either click the Terminal icon (it looks like a tiny monitor) or hit CTRL+ ALT + T. Once open, you will see a black screen appear with a flashing prompt. If you connect to your Pi via SSH or you already booted to the command prompt, you don't need to open terminal, because you're already there.

pi@raspberrypi:~ $

This prompt is telling us that we are logged in as a user called pi and that our machine is called raspberry pi. The $ refers to our permissions, in that we have permission to edit any file or folder in our home directory, which in this case is /home/pi/.

In our home directory we can store our work, projects, pictures etc. But we cannot harm the underlying filesystem as we do not have permission to do so. To make system wide changes we either need to be a user called “root” which has similar powers to administrator on Windows, or we need to use sudo (see below) to temporarily give us extra permissions. In this guide we shall cover this and much more.

So let's start our adventure by testing out a few commands and learning more about home our Raspberry Pi works.

sudo – Super User Do

By default, Raspbian, like all forms of Linux doesn't give you the admin privileges you need to perform some core tasks like installing software. However, by prefacing any command with the word "sudo," you can have admin rights for that execution. To use "sudo," you will have to be in the "subdoers" permission group, but the good news is that the default Raspberry Pi user is already in this group.

For example, to upgrade your operating system, you'd type:

sudo apt upgrade

Configuring Your Pi

 

img

 

Whether you want to change your password, enable VNC, overclock your Raspberry Pi or set your Wi-Fi network from the terminal, the easiest way is by using the configuration tool. To launch it, simply type:

sudo raspi-config

Moving around the filesystem is something we take for granted in a GUI environment. But with the terminal we can do everything, and with great speed and precision. We just need to know the correct commands. If you don't have permission to perform any of these actions on a particular file or directory, prefacing the command with sudo will probably let you.

pwd – Print working directory

This command will show the full path to the directory we are in, for example /home/pi/.

pwd

 

img

 

ls – List directory content

This command is used to list the contents of a directory.

List files in your current directory.

ls

List the files in another directory, such as /var/log:

ls /var/log

See hidden files and directories, in a long list with extra details.

ls -lha

List all files of a certain type, for example .py Python files.

ls *py

cd – Change directory

Using this command we can move around the filesystem. For example to move from our home directory to Downloads

cd Downloads

Move to a directory in another part of the filesystem, for example /var/log.

cd /var/log

Go back to the previous directory that we were in.

cd –

Go back to our home directory.

cd ~

Working with files

Sometimes we need to take a peek inside a file, look for a specific command, error or bug and with these commands we can do just that all from the terminal.

cat – Print files to the terminal

Print the contents of a file to the terminal, for example a Python file.

cat test.py

Print contents of the file to the terminal with line numbers.

cat -n test.py

 

img

 

less – Print files to the terminal

This command will print the contents of a file in sections and we can scroll through the file using the arrow keys, Page Up / Down and Home / End.

less /var/log/syslog

grep – Looking inside a file

To search inside a file for a specific word / section of text. Typically used with log files when looking for issues. In this example we use lscpu to print the details of the CPU which is passed via a pipe | to grep which we instruct to look for “MHz”.

lscpu | grep “MHz”

Edit a file

For when you quickly need to edit a config file, Python code or just write a to do list.

nano

Nano is the easiest command-line editor for beginners.

Create a new file, for example newfile.txt**.

nano newfile.txt

Edit an existing file, for example test.py.

nano test.py

Inside nano we navigate using the arrow keys and it works just like a regular text editor.

Save your work.

CTRL + OConfirm filename, Press Enter

Exit nano.

CTRL + X

System Resources & Management

Managing our operating system and checking system resources is standard practice in the terminal. Here we show a few commands to get you started.

htop – Display system processes

Shows the current CPU load, RAM usage and running system processes. Installed by default on Raspbian. Useful for closing non responsive applications.

htop

 

img

 

free – Show amount of free and used RAM

This command will tell us how much RAM is in use, and what is free for applications. Using the -m option we can set the values in MB.

free -m

 

img

 

dmesg – Monitor kernel events

The kernel is the core of the operating system and with dmesg we can see what events are happening behind the scenes. Useful for debugging issues with devices.

dmesg

 

img

 

File Management

Moving, deleting, copying and creating new files and directories are some of the most basic actions that we need to do. From the terminal we can do that and much more.

mv – Move / rename a file

This command offers two functions. We can move a file from one location to another. For example here we move test.py to the Documents directory.

mv test.py Documents/

The command can also be used to rename a file or directory. Here we rename test.py to test2.py.

mv test.py test2.py

rm – Delete a file

With this command we can delete files and directories. In this example we delete the file test.py.

rm test.py

cp – Copy a file

To copy a file, for example test.py to our Documents directory.

cp test.py Documents/

To copy a directory, for example /home/pi/test2 to /home/pi/Documents/ we need to use the -r option to copy everything across.

cp -r test2/ Documents/

mkdir – Create a directory

Create a new directory to store work. For example let's create a directory called Work in our home directory.

mkdir Work

Software Installation

Just like any computer we need to make sure that our software is up to date and on our Raspberry Pi the tool to do just that is called apt.

apt – Install and manage software

Apt, the Advanced Packaging Tool. The app store of Linux. To use apt we will need to use sudo as it will make changes to the operating system.

First we update the list of installable software.

sudo apt update

Then we can install a specific application, for example to install vlc.

sudo apt install vlc

Or we can upgrade all of the software on our Raspberry Pi. Note that for this command we pass the -y option to automatically agree to install every package. But this is optional.

sudo apt upgrade -y

Network Connectivity & Internet

Checking that your Raspberry Pi is connected to the Internet is a basic yet crucial task. It enables us to debug our IoT projects and watch YouTube videos.

ping – Check that we are connected

The ping command is used to test that our Raspberry Pi is connected to the Internet / home network.

We can send a ping to a website.

ping google.com

 

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Or to an IP address such as Google’s DNS server.

ping 8.8.8.8

Or for internal connectivity checks we can send a ping to devices on our home network. This example assumes that our IP range is 192.168.1.1 but your range may be different.

ping 192.168.1.1

hostname – Get the IP address of your Raspberry Pi

The easiest way to find the IP address of our Raspberry Pi is using hostname with the -I (uppercase i) which will show all IP addresses (WiFi and Ethernet)

hostname -I

 

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Curl – Transfer data over a network

With this command we can transfer a file to and from our Raspberry Pi. For example if we wanted to download an image from a website we would use curl along with the -o option to create a file named image.jpg.

curl http://link-to-theimage.com/image.jpg -o image.jpg

The curl command is particularly useful for downloading installation scripts to automatically install add on boards. But it should be used with caution and any code reviewed before it is used.

Time Savers

The Linux terminal has many secrets and tricks, all designed to save you time and become a keyboard ninja.

history

The history command will display the history of the commands entered in the terminal. When used it will output all of the commands at once as a long list.

history

 

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At the start of each line in the list is a number and we can use this number to run that command once again. But we must precede the number with an exclamation mark.

!117

history with grep

By using a pipe “|” with the history command we can send the output of history to grep where we can then search for specific commands. Here we look for all the occurences of “apt” in history.

history | grep “apt”

CTRL + R search

Using this we can interactively search through our command history for a specific command. To start we press CTRL + R together and then start typing part of the command. For example we have just used the history | grep “apt” command so we can now press CTRL + R and start typing history and the search will find that command.

TAB completion

Think of this as “auto complete” for the terminal. The TAB key is located just above the Caps Lock key and we can use TAB completion to help complete long commands, directory listings. If we type in the first few letters of a command, for example his and press TAB it will complete the command to show history.

But if we wanted to complete a long directory path, for example /usr/lib/python3/dist-packages then we could start typing /usr/lib/ and then press TAB to show us all the directories available along that path. We could then start typing python3 and by pressing TAB a few more times, the command will narrow down the options that we can use.

Arrow keys

Another way to search through your history is to use the up and down arrow keys. With these keys we can go backwards and forwards through our command history and when the correct command is displayed, press Enter to run.

alias

Using this command we can create shortcuts / short commands from much longer ones. For example here we create an alias called updater and use that to call two commands. The first will update our list of installable software, and if that works successfully, denoted by using “&&” to chain the commands together, then it will run the upgrade on our Raspberry Pi.

alias updater=”sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y”

Now we can run our update command just by typing updater in the terminal. Note that once the Raspberry Pi is switched off, this alias is deleted.

MORE: Raspberry Pi GPIO Pinout: What Each Pin Does

MORE: How to Use Raspberry Pi as a VPN Gateway

MORE: Raspberry Pi Tutorials

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57 Vital Commands to use on Raspberrypi

What are the vital commands to know?
Well, there are quite a few, and here we will see the 57 most used sorted by category:

  • Files management
  • Network commands
  • System updates
  • Packages management
  • System management
  • Raspberry Pi OS commands
  • Misc commands
  • **Warrior commands

This list is based on my general experience on Raspberry and Linux.
Everyone uses their system differently and can use commands that are not listed here.
The goal of this article is to introduce the essential commands to start, and not to make an exhaustive list.

By the way, if you are really interested in improving your skills on Raspberry Pi, I highly recommend to check out my e-book here. It’s a 30-days challenge from beginner to master, with step-by-step tutorials and projects to practice along the way.

Files management

These are the basic commands are that every Linux beginner should learn.
You might already know these commands, so this might be a reminder.

 

The Linux arborescence is a tree, starting at the root: /

Each subfolder created under is accessible with /.

For example: /home/pi => pi is a subfolder of /home, home is a subfolder in /.

Don’t forget to use sudo if you are not allowed to access the file or directory (sudo gives you administrator privileges for the command that follows).

  • cd :

    Changes directory, go to the specified folder in the files tree.

    cd /home/pi
  • ls: Lists the files and directory in the current or specified folder.
    ls ls /home/pi
    ls -latr /home/pi
    img
  • mkdir : Creates a new subfolder in the current or specified folder.
    mkdir myfoldermkdir /home/pi/myfolder
  • cp : Copies a file or a directory to another location (to copy a complete directory you need to add the -r parameter for “recursive”).
    cp test.txt /home/pi/Documents/cp /home/pi/test.txt /home/pi/Documents/cp -r /home/pi/test/ /home/pi/Documents/
  • mv : Moves a file or a directory to another location.
    mv /home/pi/test.txt /home/Documents/mv /home/pi/test/ /home/Documents/
  • cat :

    Displays all the content of the specified file.

    cat /home/pi/README.txt
  • more :

    Displays the content of the specified file, page per page (enter or space to continue, q to quit).

    more /var/log/syslog
  • tail : Tail allows you to display the end of a file, it’s useful to check new entries in a log file.
    tail /var/log/syslogYou can specify the number of lines to display with -n.
    tail -n20 /var/log/syslogAnd finally, my favorite is the option -f to displays new lines in real-time.
    tail -f /var/log/syslog
  • head : It’s the same as tail but to display the beginning of a file.
    head /home/pi/file.txthead -n20 /home/pi/file.txt
  • grep : Grep is a powerful tool to search string in a text. You can use it to search something in a file or to filter the output of another command or script.
    Basic usage:
    grep dhcp /var/log/syslogAs I say, you can use it on a file or a script output:
    cat /var/log/syslog | grep dhcp/home/pi/myscript.sh | grep errorls -latr | grep php

    And finally, there are a lot of options to use with grep, like regular expressions or options to display lines before (-B), after (-A) or around (-C) the search string.
    You can also use -v to display everything except the input string.
    grep 'dhcp|dns' /var/log/sysloggrep -A2 -B4 'Fatal error' /var/log/apache/error.loggrep -v 'Notice' /var/log/apache/error.log
    If you like this tool, I recommend you read the main page to know exactly what you can do with it.
    man grep

  • nano :

    Nano is text editor. It would need an entire article to go into detail (

    I have done it since, click here to read more about it

    ^^).

    It allows you to edit a file, and save your changes with (CTRL + O, Enter, CTRL + X).

    nano /home/pi/myscript.sh

    You’ll find all actions available at the bottom of the screen.

  • rm : Deletes a file. For a folder, add option -rf (recursive and force)
    rm monscript.shrm -rf /home/pi/scripts/
  • tar -c:

    You can use tar to store files into an archive. It’s often used with gzip to compress files.

    tar -cvfz archive.tar.gz /home/pi/Documents/mydirectory

    -c: create an archive
    -v: verbose
    -f: filename of the archive follow
    -z: compress files with gzip

  • tar -x:

    It’s the same command but to extract files.

    tar -xvfz archive.tar.gz

    -x: extract an archive

  • find:

    As the name suggests, find is useful to locate files on your Raspberry Pi.

    find /home/pi -iname *.tar.gz

    There are many options to help you find the good file (size, last modification date, …). And if you want to learn options to quickly find a file on Raspberry Pi, you can also read this other article on the topic.

  • pwd:

    Pwd lets you see in which directory you are.

    pwd
  • tree: Another great tool to analyze your current location in the file tree. It will show you the entire lower tree (see the example below).
    tree
pi@raspberrypi:/var/log $ tree     
   .     
   |-- alternatives.log     
   |-- alternatives.log.1     
   |-- alternatives.log.2.gz     
   |-- apt     
   | |-- eipp.log.xz     
   | |-- history.log     
   | |-- history.log.1.gz     
   | |-- history.log.2.gz     
   | |-- term.log     
   | |-- term.log.1.gz     
   | `-- term.log.2.gz

There is a cheat sheet available here that you can download for free, with all the commands listed in this article (in fact there are a few bonuses in the PDF). Make sure to download it, so you always have it handy when you use your Raspberry Pi.

Network commands

Shortly after your first Raspberry Pi OS installation, you’ll need some of these commands to help you with the network configuration (especially if you are on a lite version or with SSH).

Configuration

By default, the Raspberry Pi 3B+ comes with 2 interfaces (Ethernet and Wi-Fi). The Ethernet is called eth0 and the Wi-Fi is wlan0. You have to use these names with some commands below.

  • ifconfig:

    Displays your current network configuration, mainly your IP address if connected.

    ifconfig

    ifconfig

    That’s the easiest way to find the Raspberry Pi address, but there are other solutions when you don’t have access to it (

    as I explain in this article

    ).

  • ping :

    Sends a ping packet to another IP on the network to check if the host is alive.

    ping 192.168.1.1
  • ifup :

    Enables the specified interface.

    sudo ifup eth0
  • ifdown :

    Disables the specified interface. Can be useful to disable Wi-Fi if you are already connected by cable for example.

    sudo ifdown wlan0

    By the way, it’s a great idea to disable the Wi-Fi interface if you don’t use it. You can

    find more permanent solutions in this article

    , but ifdown is a quick way to do this.

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File transfer and remote connection

  • wget :

    This command allows you to download a file from the Internet.

    wget https://wordpress.org/latest.zip
  • ssh @:

    SSH is a network protocol that provides you a way to connect securely to a remote computer.

    ssh root@192.168.1.201
  • scp @::

    scp can transfer a file to a remote computer over SSH.

    scp test.txt root@192.168.1.201:/root/
  • rsync @::

    rsync does almost the same thing but with a delta comparison algorithm and some optimizations to transfer files faster.

    rsync test.txt root@192.168.1.201:/root/
rsync -auzr /home/pi/Documents/* /home/pi/backups/Documents/

    As you can see, you can also use rsync for local file synchronization.

    I generally use this command to back up my Raspberry Pi (

    as explained here

    ). I send all this import files to my local NAS (

    I’m using this device

    ). It takes a few seconds and I know I’m safe after that.

 

You may also like:

 

System updates

 

Just after the network configuration, you’ll have to update your system to get the latest version of each default package installed.

On Raspberry Pi OS, and generally on all Linux distributions, you’ll have a package for each app or command you install. A list of all available packages is called a repository. Once installed, you need to update this repository and all of your packages regularly to keep your system safe. These commands explain how to do this. We’ll need sudo for all these commands.

  • apt-get update:

    Downloads the last repository version for each one you have in your configuration (/etc/apt/sources.list).

    sudo apt-get update
  • apt-get upgrade:

    Updates all installed packages if needed.

    sudo apt-get upgrade
  • rpi-update:

    Only use this if you know what you do.

    This command will update everything on your Raspberry Pi (firmware, packages, …) and can potentially break something.

    rpi-update

img

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Packages management

After that, you may want to install new packages on your Raspberry Pi.
Here are the commands you need to know to do this:

  • apt-get install : Installs the specified package(s).
    sudo apt-get install phpmyadminsudo apt-get install vim htop
  • apt-get remove :

    Removes a previously selected package.

    sudo apt-get remove vim
  • apt-cache search :

    Searches for a package name in the packages list (repository).

    sudo apt-cache search myadmin
sudo apt-cache search php

    img

  • dpkg -l: Lists all installed packages on your system. You can use grep to find a specific package.
    dpkg -ldpkg -l | grep myadmin

System management

Here are the commands you’ll often use to manage your Raspberry Pi system:

  • reboot:

    As the name says, this command will restart the Raspberry Pi immediately.

    sudo reboot
  • shutdown -h now:

    This is to stop the Raspberry Pi immediately.

    sudo shutdown -h now

    You can replace “now” by a specific time (shutdown -h 12:05). Don’t use the power switch to stop your Raspberry, you should do it properly by using this command or one of the other methods explained here.

  • service : This command allows you to start or stop services.
    service apache2 startservice apache2 stop
    Sometimes there are other options, depending on the service, for example:
    service apache2 reloadservice apache2 restart
    Don’t type any action to see all those available:
    service apache2
  • update-rc.d : On Debian, this command allows you to manage the service start or stop on the system boot.
    To start a service on boot:
    sudo update-rc.d ssh enableTo disable start of the service:
    sudo update-rc.d -f ssh removeThe -f option is here to force the symbolic link deletion. This command is only for service. To start other scripts or commands on boot, you have to edit the /etc/rc.local file.
    sudo nano /etc/rc.local
  • ps: This command displays all running process on your Raspberry Pi.
    The basic command is this one to display everything:
    ps auxYou can also display process started by a specific user:
    ps -u pi
    This will give you a list like this:
    ps linux command
    The process ID (PID) can be useful for other commands, to stop it for example (next command)
  • kill :

    The kill command allows you to terminate a process. You’ll need the process ID to do this (see the previous command).

    kill 12345

    Sometime you may need to use the -9 option to force all related commands to stop.
    For example, if you run 20 commands in a script and kill it, it’ll continue to the next line, not exit the program, except if you use the -9 option.

    kill -9 12345

    You can also use killall to stop all occurrences of a program.

    killall php

    This command will stop all PHP scripts.

    Be aware that this command will immediately stop the process asked, no matter what was going on. It isn’t a clean stop.

    You don’t know what the script is doing so it can damage data or corrupt files.
    This should be used as a last step, and if possible on the non-critical process.

  • htop:

    This tool is an alternative to top. It’s more user-friendly than top, with colors and dynamic load bars.

    htop
  • df:

    Displays the partition list, with the disk space used and available for each one.

    df
df -h

    -h option is for the human-readable format.

  • vcgencmd measure_temp:

    You may not remember it, but this command displays the current CPU temperature.

    vcgencmd measure_temp

Raspberry Pi OS commands

Most of the commands from this post are basically Linux commands.
But Raspberry Pi OS has some exclusive ones that I will introduce.

These are not all essentials, but you may not know them even if you are good with Linux:

  • raspi-config:

    This tool allows you to manage all the configuration from a terminal or an SSH connection.

    sudo raspi-config

    raspi config

  • raspistill:

    If you have a camera plugged in the

    camera module

    , this command takes a shot and saves it as an image file.

    raspistill -o image.jpg
  • raspivid:

    It’s the same command but it captures video from the camera.

    raspivid -o video.h264 -t 10000

    -t parameter is the time of the capture in milliseconds.

  • raspi-gpio: This command allows you to manage the GPIO pins of the Raspberry Pi. You can either set or get a value.
    raspi-gpio getraspi-gpio get 20raspi-gpio set 20 a5raspi-gpio set 20 op pn dh
  • raspividyuv or raspiyuv:

    This command is similar to the raspivid but for a raw YUV video stream.

    raspividyuv -o video.yuv
  • rpi-update:

    Only use this if you know what you are doing. This will update everything on your Raspberry Pi (firmware, packages, …) and can potentially break something.

    sudo rpi-update

Misc

Here are some other useful commands that I haven’t managed to place in the other categories :):

  • history: Linux store any command you type in an archive file. History is the command to use to display this list.
    history
    img
    You can also clear all the history.
    history -cOr clear one specific entry.
    history -d 12
  • crontab:

    Cron is a tool to schedule tasks on a Raspberry Pi. Crontab is the file where you enter lines for each task to run.

    crontab -l crontab -e

    -l option to display lines.
    -e option to edit lines.
    You can use sudo before to schedule tasks to run with root privileges.
    I have an entire tutorial on this topic if you need more information.

  • screen:

    This tool allows you to let something run in the background even if you close your session.

    screen -s <name> screen -r <name>

    -s option to start a new screen with the following name.
    -r option to resume a running screen with this name.
    You can forget the name if you want, an ID will be generated, use screen -r to find it and screen -r to resume it.
    With only one screen running, screen -r will resume it directly.

Warrior commands

In this last part, I’ll introduce some powerful commands to master your Raspberry Pi
If you start on Linux, you may not need to know this one, but if you want to save time or go further on Raspberry Pi, you should know this commands

awk: awk is nearly a programming language, it allows you to search string and transform them to display it differently.
So it’ll be difficult to summarize all the possibilities in a few lines, but I’ll try to give you some examples to understand it.
The basic syntax of awk is this one:

Here is a basic example:

awk -F":" '{print $1}' /etc/passwd

/etc/passwd is the file to parse. The field separator is “:” so we use it in the -F option.
Then in the program string, we ask to display only the first column.
So this command will display only a list of usernames.
This is the simple way to use it if you want to know more, I recommend reading a dedicated tutorial like this one.

sed: sed allows you to do similar things to awk. This command will transform text to what you want.
As for awk, it’s a complex command to master, and I’ll only introduce it here.
The basic syntax looks like this:

sed <option> <script> <file>

So it’s very close to awk on this.
Let’s see an example:

sed '/^#/d' /etc/apache2/apache2.conf

In each configuration file, you’ll find a lot of comments to explain what each line is.
This command will display the apache configuration file without comments.
We use a regular expression to delete lines starting with #.
You have to redirect the output to another file to save it.

sed '/^#/d' /etc/apache2/apache2.conf > /etc/apache2/apache2-nocomment.conf

Like for awk, this is just a glimpse of what sed can do.
If you want to know more, there is also a good sed tutorial on the same website.

cut: cut is the last way to transform text that I’ll introduce. It’s less powerful but it’s simpler to use, so if cut can do it, you’ll probably prefer to use it rather than awk or sed.
As the name suggests, cut allows you to extract part of a text or file.
The basic syntax is:

cut <options> <file> 
echo <string> | cut <options>

The first one is for a file, and the second one to cut a string directly.
A basic example now:

echo "abcdefghi" | cut -c 2-4

This will display only “bcd”.
-c option is for the character, so basically, it’ll extract character 2 to 4.

Here are other options with a file:

cut -d : -f 1 /etc/passwd

This will do the same thing as the first example of the awk command.
/etc/password is a file with “:” use as a delimiter.
-d option is to give the delimiter character (“:”).
-f option is to indicate the column to extract (f stands for the field).
So, this will display only the first column and you’ll get a list of usernames.

wc: wc stands for Word Count, it allows you to count everything in a file or stream.
There are three main options: -l for lines, -w for words and -m for characters.
There is also the -c option to get the file size.
Wc without option will give you all of this.

wc .bash_history 
668  1977 17979 .bash_history

The first column is line count, second is word count and last is the file size in bytes.
Here are some examples of options:

wc -l .bash_history 
ls -latr | wc -l 
wc -w myfile.txt

lsof: lsof stands for “List open files”. This command displays all files open on your Raspberry Pi.
This can be useful to know why you can’t edit a file, or which file lock the unmount process.

lsof

watch: If you are waiting for something, in a file or directory, the watch command can help you to monitor what happens. This will execute the same command every two seconds.

watch date 
watch ls -latr 
watch cat output.txt

You can also change the refresh rate with the -n option.

watch -n10 date

This will display the current date every ten seconds.

netstat: Netstat is a powerful tool to monitor what your Raspberry Pi is doing with the network. For example, you can see every port open and every traffic flow.
But netstat is a complex tool that i can’t explain in detail in a few lines.
I will only introduce some basic usages to display all listening connections you can use:

netstat -l

-p option will add the process id (PID).

netstat -lp

-c option allows you to refresh data continuously.

netstat -lpc

You can find all options in the man page of netstat.

dmesg: This command is useful to understand your Raspberry Pi boot problems.
It will show you every event that happened in the start sequence.
Here you could see errors with drivers or services and understand why something doesn’t work the way you want.

dmesg

You will get a column with the time elapsed since the beginning of the boot and a text explaining what happened.
There are also normal messages when everything is fine.
If your Raspberry Pi doesn’t boot, you can also check my other tips here.

Video

If you need a quick demonstration of these commands, you can check this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0EUdPHjw6Nw

And please subscribe to get all the new videos in your YouTube feed:

Conclusion

Here we are.
Now you should have a better idea of commands to learn to get the best of your Raspberry Pi.

And you, what are your more used commands?
You can see it by analyzing your history file with this kind of command:

history | awk '{CMD[$2]++;count++;}END { for (a in CMD)print CMD[a] " " CMD[a]/count*100 "% " a;}' | grep -v "./" | column -c3 -s " " -t | sort -nr | nl | head -n10

Feel free to post your top 10 in comments :).

Raspberry Pi Resources

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You can also find all my recommendations for tools and hardware on this page.

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